[This article, which was published in
The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, June, 1918, was reprinted in The Southwestern
Historical Quarterly, XXII, 1-17. It gives a brief account of Austin's problems in
settling Texas and affords an insight into his character, For a detailed history of
Austin, see Barker, The Life of Stephen F. Austin and The Austin Papers (4 volumes),
published by the Government Printing Office, Washington, and the University of Texas
Press, Austin.]

Considering the difficulties of his task, the completeness of his
responsibility for its accomplishment, and its far-reaching results, Stephen F. Austin has
claims to being the greatest colonial proprietary in American history. He was born in
Wythe County, Virginia, November 3, 1793, moved to Missouri at the age of five, spent four
years (1804-1808) at different Connecticut schools and two at Transylvania University, and
then, at the age of seventeen, returned to Missouri, with schooling complete, to plunge
into his father's complex business, a part of which he took over in 1817. In 1813 he was
elected to the territorial legislature of Missouri, and by successive re-elections served
until 1819; in 1815 Governor Clark gave him an adjutant's commission in the Missouri
militia; in 1818 he became a director in the ill-fated Bank of St. Louis; two years later
Governor Miller appointed him judge of the federal circuit of Arkansas; and at the
beginning of 1821 he was editing a newspaper at New Orleans. With training and experience
of such breadth and versatility and with his intimate knowledge of frontier life, Austin
at twenty-eight was well prepared to be the founder and patriarchal ruler of a wilderness
commonwealth. He embarked with his father somewhat dubiously upon the colonization of
Texas, and it was partly in obedience to his father's dying wish that he determined to
continue the undertaking alone.

[Moses Austin to
Stephen F. Austin, May 22, 1821, Austin Papers, University of Texas: "I can now go
forward with confidence and I hope and pray you will discharge your doubts as to the
Enterprise." Austin to Wharton, April 24, 1829, Austin Papers: "I myself
believed that the probabilities of failure or success were almost equal." Mary Austin
(mother of Stephen) to Stephen F. Austin, June 8, 1821, Austin Papers: "he called me
to his bedside and with much distress and difficulty of speech beged me to tell you to
take his place and if god in his wisdom thought best to disappoint him in the
accomplishment of his wishes and plans formed, he prayed him to extend his goodness to you
and enable you to go on with the business in the same way he would have done."]

But having begun, he spent himself in singular devotion to the healthy
growth of Texas and the welfare of the colonists whom his influence brought to the country
and for whose prosperity he felt a personal responsibility. In moments of despondency,
when particularly harassed by public duties and anxieties, he longed for "a small
farm, a moderate independence, and a wife," but for the most part he had no time
for thoughts of self. His conception of his task extended farther' than the mere planting
of a number of families in an uninhabited waste; it was to create there a high-toned,
intelligent, prosperous, and happy society.

Such an enterprise as the one I undertook in settling an uninhabited
country [he wrote in 1832] must necessarily pass through three regular gradations. The
first step was to overcome the roughness of the wilderness, and may be compared to the
labor of the farmer on a piece of ground covered with woods, bushes, and brambles, which
must be cut down and cleared away, and the roots grubbed out before it can be cultivated.
The second step was to pave the way for civilization and lay the foundation for lasting
productive advancement in wealth, morality, and happiness. This step might be compared to
the ploughing, harrowing, and sowing the ground after it is cleared. The third and last
and most important step is to give proper and healthy direction to public opinion,
morality, and education . . . to give tone, character, and consistency to society, which,
to continue the simile, is gathering in the harvest and applying it to the promotion of
human happiness. In trying to lead the colony through these gradations my task has been
one of continued hard labor. I have been clearing away brambles, laying foundations,
sowing the seed. The genial influences of cultivated society will be like the sun shedding
light, fragrance, and beauty.

Ten years of retrospect no doubt helped him to formulate this statement
of his purpose, but it is perfectly clear that his aim was in mind from the beginning. To
another correspondent he wrote:

My ambition has been to succeed in redeeming Texas from its wilderness
state by means of the plough alone, in spreading over it North American population,
enterprise and intelligence, in doing this I hoped to make the fortunes of thousands and
my own amongst the rest. . . . I think I derived more satisfaction from the view of
flourishing farms springing up in this wilderness than military or political chieftains do
from the retrospect of their victorious campaigns. My object is to build up, for the
present as well as for future generations. . . . I deemed the object laudible and
honorable and worthy the attention of honorable men.

In some ways the time was ripe for his undertaking in 1821. The
westward movement had crossed the Mississippi and reached the borders of Texas, and the
panic of 1819 and the reorganization of the land system of the United States in 1820
cooperated to stimulate emigration to lands that combined the attractions of princely
abundance, accessibility, fertility, and cheapness that amounted in effect to a free gift.
Austin's greatness, therefore, consists not in having overcome difficulties of
transportation and communication to induce reluctant colonists to reclaim a distant and
inhospitable land, but in the tact with which, on the one hand, he governed his
independent western frontiersmen, curbing their intolerance of the "foreigner"
and their disgust at his political ineptitude, while, on the other, he won and held the
confidence of Mexican statesmen, soothing their fear of the disloyalty of the colonists
and the ultimate absorption of Texas by the United States. Austin stated his problem in a
very few words in a letter of 1829:

I had an ignorant, whimsical, selfish and suspicions set of rulers over
me to keep good natured, a perplexed, confused colonization law to execute, and an unruly
set of North American frontier republicans to controul who felt that they were sovereigns,
for they knew that they were beyond the arm of the Govt. or of law, unless it pleased them
to be controuled.

Fortunately, though it seemed to him ruinously unfortunate at the time,
the revolution and the political upheaval incident to the establishment of Mexican
independence carried Austin to Mexico in the spring of 1822, after many of his colonists
had already arrived, and kept him there for a year securing confirmation of his grant,
which had been made by the Spanish regime. There, during the brief space of eleven months,
he saw the executive government go through the stages of a regency, an empire, and a
military triumvirate. Iturbide
elevating himself to the imperial throne by Napoleonic methods and being himself
overthrown by Santa Anna posing as a
liberal while the legislature traveled through a provisional junta gubernativa, a
sovereign elected congress, a rump (the junta nacional instituyente), and back
again, after the fall of Iturbide, to the congress. With little money, and reduced at last
to the extremity of selling his watch, Austin possessed his soul in such patience as he
could and gently nagged a national colonization law through Iturbide's rump parliament,
only to have it annulled by the return of the legitimate congress and its sweeping decree
repealing all acts of the empire. He had won his case, however, and congress instructed
the executive to confirm his contract in the terms of the imperial law. Incidentally he
had learned the language, gained the confidence and esteem of such men as Anastacio Bustamante,
Lorenzo de Zavala, Ramos Arispe, and Lucas Alaman,
and obtained an insight into Mexican personal and official character that was the key to
his future success. For a foreigner he had exercised a remarkable influence upon the
shifting committees of the various legislative bodies. He was largely responsible for the
passage of the colonization law, tried his hand at drafting an imperial constitution which
combined some of the features of the Constitution of the United States with the Spanish
constitution of 1812, and, on his departure, left with Ramos Arispe a document which
probably in considerable degree shaped the acta constitutiva,
the provisional constitution which bridged the transition from empire to federal republic.

Austin returned to Texas with extraordinary powers. The governor had
already invested him with general authority to govern the colony until the regular state
administration could be extended to it, and now, by decree of the national government,
this power was more specifically defined and enlarged. He was supreme judge, save that in
capital cases he must submit his decision to the commandant general of the Eastern
Interior Provinces before execution; he could issue regulations for the government of the
settlements when the national laws did not apply; he was commander of the militia, which
it was his duty to keep in efficient state of organization, with the title of lieutenant
colonel, and with authority to wage offensive and defensive war on the Indians; he had
sole power to admit immigrants to or exclude them from his colony, which covered an area
larger than Massachusetts; and, acting with a commissioner appointed by the governor, he
could give title to married men for 4,600 acres of land, subject to improvement in two
years, and could greatly augment that amount to men with large families, or who
established gins, sawmills, or other public conveniences.

Most of this power Austin retained for seven years. The legislature, it
is true, was organized in 1824, when Texas was united with Coahuila to the south, but,
aside from passing the state colonization law, its attention until 1827 was centered on
the formation of the constitution, so that there was very little legislation for Texas. A
local ayuntamiento or municipal government was established in 1828, but for several years
this took little of the burden of administration from Austin, because, though he steadily
refused to accept office in the ayuntamiento, the members of that body looked to him for
guidance and both state and federal authorities showed a disposition to hold him
responsible for the smooth working of the local government, while of the land system he
retained direction throughout the colonial period. From inclination as well as from
necessity, he followed democratic methods of administration, dividing the colony into
districts and allowing the inhabitants to elect alcaldes, or justices of the peace, and
militia officers, himself hearing appeals from the former and directing the latter. But in
the matter of legislation he acted alone, promulgating, with the approval of the political
chief at San Antonio, a brief civil and criminal code which was in operation for five
years. In his management of the lands of the colony he followed from the beginning the
practice of issuing titles only on official surveys and of recording in permanent form all
papers connected with the title, including the surveyor's plot of the land. The government
made no allowance for the expenses of administration, and in the early days taxation was
impossible, so that, except for fees of alcaldes and constables, the cost of government
fell heavily upon Austin. This was particularly true of his management of the land
business, while he was at constant expense also in entertaining travelers and prospectors,
sending expresses, giving presents to Indians, and often furnishing munitions and supplies
for Indian campaigns.

Anticipating some of these expenses, and wishing also, naturally,
compensation for his industry and enterprise, Austin had, before planting a single
colonist, arranged, with the knowledge of Governor Martinez, to collect 12 1/2 cents an
acre for the land in his grant, assuming himself the cost of surveying land and of issuing
and recording titles. He advertised this in plain and unambiguous terms, and the original
settlers accepted it gladly, because elsewhere in Texas they had no right to settle or
acquire land at all. The imperial colonization law of 1823, in accordance with whose
terms, after its repeal, Austin's grant was confirmed, greatly enlarged the headrights
which he had planned to allow settlers and provided that he himself should receive as
compensation for his labors some 65,000 acres for each two hundred families that he
introduced. Whether this was intended to annul the 12 1/2 cent agreement is open to
question. Austin thought not, and so explained on his return from Mexico in the summer of
1823. Where each settler could have 4,600 acres for the asking, the empresario's 65,000
acres were not likely to yield much ready money for current expenses. Nevertheless, some
of the colonists now objected to the payment and carried their complaint to the political
chief, who had replaced the governor at San Antonio, and he ruled against Austin's right
to charge for the lands. Instead, he fixed a scale of fees for the surveyor, the land
commissioner, and the state, which Austin thought had no warrant in law. He contented
himself, however, with making a straightforward defense of his reasons for charging the
fee, pointing out the risks, hardships, sacrifices, and expenses he had suffered, and
asking plainly if he had not given in labor and responsibility the equivalent of the 12
1/2 cents an acre which the colonists had agreed to pay him, or whether they could or
would have obtained anything, except through his exertions. Many considered themselves in
equity bound by their contracts, one declaring that no candid man in the colony denied the
obligation, but Austin relinquished them all and made an arrangement with Bastrop for a
division of the fee which the political chief had prescribed for the latter as
commissioner. It yielded much less than his contracts with the colonists would have done,
but it avoided friction between them and the political chief. The colonization law which
the legislature passed in 1825 recognized the justice of Austin's position and authorized
empresarios to collect a fee from their settlers in addition to the generous premium of
land allowed by the state.

A few of the colonists were already grumbling because they saw Austin
granting three, four, and five leagues to some while he allowed them only a paltry 4,600
acres. They were ignorant of Spanish and knew nothing of his powers except what he or his
secretary and the commissioner Bastrop told them. Might he not be imposing upon them and
exploiting them for his own advantage? Had he any authority either to grant land or govern
the colony? The political chief's interference in the matter of the fees helped to
strengthen their suspicion, and uneasy whispers increased to a respectable rumble of
discontent. The political chief assured them that Austin's authority was ample in every
respect, but the excitement subsided slowly and did not disappear until Austin convinced
the leaders of his power by arresting them and threatening to send them to San Antonio for
trial. The threat and a heart to heart talk were sufficient, and they soon became his
staunch supporters. Austin ascribed much of his trouble to the colonists' ignorance of the
language, their exercise of the sacred American right to abuse a public official, and the
absence of definite laws.

You know [he wrote in 1825] that it is innate in an American to suspect
and abuse a public officer whether he deserves it or not. I have a mixed multitude to deal
with, collected from all quarters, strangers to each other, to me, and to the laws and
language of the country. They came here with all the ideas of Americans and expect to see
and understand the laws they are governed by. . . . Could I have shown them a law defining
positively the quantity of land they were to get and no more and a code of laws by which
they were to be governed I should have had no difficulty-but they saw at once that my
powers were discretionary, and that a very great augmentation to their grants could be
made, and thus the colonization law itself and the authority vested in me under that law
holds me up as a public mark to be shot at....

With the readiness of the colonists to "growl" and
"grumble" and "mutter," "without knowing why, or without being
able to explain why," he was not, however, disposed to quarrel.

It arose [he said] from a principle which is common to all North
Americans, a feeling which is the natural offspring of the unbounded republican liberty
enjoyed by all classes in the United States; . . . jealousy of those in office, jealousy
of undue encroachments on personal rights, and a general repugnance to everything that
wore the semblance of a stretch of power.

Another duty that brought Austin some enemies and much annoyance was
that of keeping criminals and men of bad character out of the colony. He required
certificates of character from all who obtained land, and though, in the nature of things,
these certificates could be hardly more than formal statements of "parties
unknown," he made remarkably few mistakes. He banished several from the colony in
1823 and 1824 under threat of severe corporal punishment, and in one case applied the
lash. Some of the exiles took refuge in the neighboring colony of the Mexican empresario
De Leon and avenged themselves by making false reports about Austin to the government, and
others settled in the no man's land on the borders of Louisiana and Arkansas and deterred
honest emigrants from proceeding to Texas by tales of violence and anarchy. To an inquirer
alarmed by such stories in 1829 Austin wrote, "in proportion to our numbers, we are
as enlightened, as moral, as good, and as 'law-abiding' men, as can be found in any part
of the United States, and greatly more so than ever settled a frontier"---an opinion
whose substantial accuracy the historian must confirm. For, besides the supervision of
immigrants which good policy as well as law required, the great majority, especially of
the earlier colonists, were men of family, seeking homes, not speculators or adventurers.
The state colonization law of 1825 put a premium on marriage by allowing married men four
times as much land as unmarried men, while Austin had previously required ten single men
to unite into a "family" to obtain a league, the headright of a married man.

It would be impossible to exaggerate Austin's labors in the early years
of the colony. A letter to the political chief in 1826 gives a clue to their character and
variety. He had left San Felipe on April 4 to point out some land recently conceded to one
of the state officials and had been detained by excessive rains and swollen streams until
the 29th. On May 1 he had begun the trial of an important case that had lasted seven days;
at the same time he had had to entertain a delegation of the Tonkaway Indians, and make
preparations for a campaign against another tribe; to talk to and answer questions of many
"foreigners," who had come to look at the country, explaining and translating
the federal constitution and some of the laws for them; to receive and pass upon
applications for land, hear reports and issue instructions to surveyors; and to correspond
with superior civil and military officers. This, the 8th, his first free day since
returning, was mail day, and he had received two communications and dispatched five. Too
much of his time, he once complained, was consumed in settling "neighborhood disputes
about cows and calves," but it was the patience with which he devoted himself to the
minutiae of the colony as well as his intelligence and ability in more important things
that accounts for his success. During these years he gathered by painstaking surveys and
personal observations data for a map of Texas, published by Tanner in 1829; charted
Galveston Bay and the several harbors and navigable rivers of the state; promoted trade
with the United States and kept a stream of immigrants flowing into the colony; encouraged
the erection of gins and sawmills and the establishment of schools; and exercised
throughout a most remarkable influence over the legislature at Saltillo in matters
affecting the interest of the colony. To mention but a few instances of this, he was
responsible in considerable degree for the liberal terms of the colonization law, his
arguments prevented the constitutional abolition of slavery in 1827 and secured the labor
law of the next year permitting the continued introduction of slaves in the form of
indented servants, and in 1829 his desire to protect the colonists against suit for debts
contracted before coming to the country found expression in what we should now consider a
sweeping homestead law. He himself was a member of the legislature in 1831-1832, and was
re-elected in 1834 but was prevented from serving by his detention in Mexico.

Burdened as he was with the affairs of his own colony, he found time to
answer the calls of others. He repeatedly exerted himself to obtain titles for families
who had drifted in and settled on the eastern border of the province before the passage of
the colonization law; and he was always ready to give other empresarios the benefit of his
knowledge and experience. DeWitt
was deeply indebted to him for such success as he enjoyed, Burnet drew heavily upon him, and Edwards received advice
that ought to have saved him from the folly of the Fredonian rebellion. He perceived very
clearly the mutual interest of all in the peaceful and rapid development of Texas, and,
with the field so vast and the laborers so few, he welcomed every additional effort in the
promotion of that end. Some of his fellow empresarios, however, without his vision and
interest in the permanent growth of the country, doubted his sincerity and blamed him for
embarrassments and failures due to their own impatience, greed, and unwillingness to adapt
themselves to Mexican racial characteristics and sensibilities. What was needed in Texas
he said

was men, not open mouthed politicians, nor selfish visionary
speculators, nor jealous ambitious declamitory demagogues who will irritate the public
mind by inflammatory criticisms about temporary evils and by indulging in vague surmises.
We need men of enlightened judgement, disinterested prudence, and reflection, with a great
stock of patience, unshaken perseverance and integrity of purpose. Men who will calmly put
their shoulders to the wheel and toil for the good of others as well as for their own, and
who will be contented to rise with the country without [trying] to force it forward
prematurely to overtop the genl. level of prosperity by undue individual advancement. A
band of such men firmly linked together by the bonds of mutual confidence and unity of
purpose and action could and would make Texas the garden of North America.

He did not, of course, as we have seen, escape misconstruction by his
own colonists, but this he philosophically recognized as inevitable, and even necessary,
in a way to the success of the colony.

To have been universally popular amongst the settlers for the first two
or three years [he said] would have endangered all, for it would have excited vague
jealousies in the [fear?] alone that I was conciliating popular favor in order to wield it
in a particular way. To have been universally unpopular endangered all in another way, for
it would have totally destroyed that degree of popular confidence and character abroad
which was necessary to draw emigration and it would also have deprived me of the power of
controuling the settlers sufficiently to have prevented them from destroying themselves. .
. . The reflecting and worthy part of the settlers have always adhered to me firmly
throughout. [The other class] abused me over their grog and at times have had weight
enough to require humoring and management to keep within bounds, but they effectually
removed all suspicion that I was courting the favor of a rabble for the purpose of
wielding it, and in this way they did me and the colony a service, though without knowing
or intending it, and I used their abuse of me to advance the public good and establish
myself more firmly in the confidence of my rulers.

He was conservative in declaring that the "reflecting and worthy
part of the settlers" adhered to him, and they were always a vast majority. They
brought him their personal troubles and perplexities, and surrendered completely to his
guidance in every crisis through which the colony passed. This was true in 1826, when he
led them against Edwards's rebellious "frontier republicans" at Nacogdoches; in
1829, when he obtained the exemption of Texas from President Guerrero's emancipation decree;
in 1830, when he reconciled them to the federal decree limiting immigration from the
United States, while taking steps to secure its suspension; in 1832, when, after the
expulsion of Bustamante's garrisons from Texas during his absence, he convinced Colonel
Mexia of their loyalty to the liberal party of Santa Anna; in 1833, when they petitioned
for the separation of Texas and Coahuila and sent him to Mexico to urge its approval; and,
finally, in 1835, when they resisted Santa Anna's encroachments on republican government,
for without his advice and organizing influence very few would have been ready then to
take up arms. The revolution once begun, he was called to the command of the army, much as
Washington went to Cambridge, to quiet the claims of rival aspirants, and when order was
established and the campaign under way they sent him to the United States to find money
and munitions to maintain it.

His control of the settlers in every essential movement as they
increased from a few hundred in 1821 to many thousands in 1835 proves him a great leader.
The confidence of Mexican officials, despite their innate fear of Anglo-American
expansion, which was constantly stimulated by the efforts of the United States to acquire
Texas, proves him a diplomat of no mean ability. With both, his success was due to his
absolute honesty and fearless candor. His one purpose was the advancement of Texas.

"I feel," he said only a few months before his death, "a
more lively interest for its welfare than can be expressed--one that is greatly superior
to all pecuniary or personal views of any kind. The prosperity of Texas has been the
object of my labors, the idol of my existence---it has assumed the character of a religion
for the guidance of my thoughts and actions for fifteen years."

He sincerely believed until the beginning of 1836 that the best
interest of Texas lay in its loyalty to Mexico, that the colonists and the government had,
therefore, a common interest in its development, and he was the efficient apostle of that
faith. He felt some fear of the outcome of republican government in Mexico, he knew that
the people were not fitted for it, but hoped they might stumble along until education and
experience prepared them for it. At the same time, as a prudent man would in his position,
he sometimes contemplated a condition of anarchy or oppression that would render continued
loyalty impossible. In such a contingency, though he shrank from it, he favored
independence; never, until shortly before his death, annexation to the United States.

As an "independent speck in the galaxy of nations" [he wrote
in 1829] Europe will gladly receive our cotton and sugar, etc., on advantageous terms in
exchange for "untariffed" manufactured articles. We should be too contemptible
to excite the jealousy of the Northern Mammoth, and policy and interest would induce
Europe to let us alone. I deem it more than probable that the great powers would all unite
in guaranteeing the Independence of little Texas. There are many powerful reasons why it
should be to their interest to do it.

On his attitude toward annexation there is an abundance of material
from 1830 to 1835, and there can be no doubt of his sincerity. This conclusion does not
rest alone on an interpretation of Austin's own statements, for in 1834 Anthony Butler
attributed to him his failure to buy Texas. Two reasons for opposing annexation Austin
gives, the land system of the United States and slavery.

If that Govt. should get hold of us and introduce its land system,
thousands who are now on the move and who have not yet secured their titles would be
totally ruined. The greatest misfortune that could befall Texas at this moment would be a
sudden change by which any of the emigrants would be thrown upon the liberality of the
Congress of the United States of the North.

This he wrote to his brother-in-law in 1830. A few months later he
wrote that he should "oppose a union with the United States without some
guarantees, amongst them I should insist on the perpetual exclusion of slavery from this
country." No doubt the tariff figured in his consideration, and it is evident,
too, that he believed that a strong population in Texas would ultimately wield such an
influence with the government as to be freer under Mexico than under the United States.

Austin's views on slavery, despite the quotation just read, and a
number of other expressions equally unequivocal, require explanation. He successfully
opposed constitutional emancipation in 1827, urged in vain at the same time that
immigrants be permitted to continue bringing slaves from the United States, obtained the
withdrawal of Guerrero's emancipation decree in 1829, and declared in 1835 that Texas must
be a slave state. The contradiction is more apparent than real, but when all is said some
inconsistency remains. The truth seems to be that he did deplore slavery, but that he
recognized its economic necessity in the development of Texas. Most of his colonists were
naturally to be expected from the neighboring slaves states, but slave owners would not
come if forbidden to bring their slaves, and others who did come would be greatly hampered
by the lack of free labor. About the time of this letter he seems to have felt that a
satisfactory compromise might be reached by the labor law of 1828, which, in effect,
established the peonage system of Mexico. He wrote in 1831:

Negroes can be brought here under indentures, as servants, but not as
slaves. This question of slavery is a difficult one to get on with. It will ultimately be
admitted, or the free negroes will be formed by law into a separate and distinct class-the
laboring class. Color forms a line of demarkation between them and the whites. The law
must assign their station, fix their rights and their disabilities and
obligations-something between slavery and freedom, but neither the one nor the other.
Either this or slavery in full must take place. Which is best? Quien sabe? It is a
difficult and dark question.

In 1832 the labor law was modified, limiting contracts thereafter to
ten years, hence, perhaps, his declaration for slavery in 1835. His defense of existing
slavery in 1826-1827, it should be added, was based on what he considered guaranteed
vested right, his original contract with the Spanish government, under which his first
families were introduced, having recognized slavery by augmenting a settler's headright in
proportion to the number of slaves he owned.

I have tried to present in this short paper something of the
personality of Austin as he revealed himself in his work. He was a grave, gentle, kindly
man, charitable, tolerant, affectionate and loyal, naturally impulsive but restrained by
habit, sensitive, lonely, and given too much, perhaps, to introspection. He enjoyed social
companionship, but his position set him apart from the colonists and made close
friendships with them difficult and rare. He smoked, danced now and then, loved music (he
played the flute in his younger days), and his bills show occasional charges for whiskey,
brandy, and wine. He was well educated, widely read for his opportunities, and a clear
thinker. His letters in their straightforward precision and naturalness remind one of
Franklin. He worked incessantly, unselfishly, and generally most patiently. In short, he
appears to me a lovable human character, with many charming qualities.

On returning from his mission to the United States in the summer of
1836 he was persuaded to be a candidate for the presidency. He consented with indifference
and took his defeat by Houston with equanimity. He had been absent from the country for
the better part of three years on public business, part of the time in a Mexican prison;
his personal affairs were greatly neglected, and he welcomed the prospect of leisure to
put them in order. However, when his victorious rival asked him to be secretary of state,
he consented, in the belief that he could be useful in bringing the infant republic to the
favorable notice of older governments. As usual, he immersed himself in public duties to
the utter neglect of self, and died from overwork and exposure on December 27, 1836. For
fifteen years he had held the destiny of Texas in the hollow of his hand, and
characteristically his last conscious thought was of its welfare. He waked from a dream
thinking that the United States had recognized its independence, and died in that belief.
His death, thus, at the age of only forty-three, on the eve of the fruition of all his
labors, with the country redeemed from the wilderness and others assuming the burden of
responsibility that had deprived him of home, wife, and family, was one of fate's grim
ironies---a distressing personal tragedy.